Right now I have a Ubuntu 8.10 64 installed. my home is on a home partition on the same physical drive. Do I just boot LiveCD of mint 64 and partition my ubuntu install then install mint over it? Will programs installed on home be accesible through menus and terminal commands like they are now?

You'll need to manually partition and use edit.Select the root partition of ubuntu and select format.The set it's mount point as /Everything will be deleted on this partitions.(any Applications you installed there with apr or synaptic)Then select your /home partition and set the correct file system format.MAKE SURE NOT TO SELECT FORMAT.And set the mount point as /home.Finish the installation and reinstall the programs that you need too.